


Salama

by caldefrance



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Beards (Facial Hair), Clothed Sex, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, Crusades, Disguise, Dressing, Getting Together, Grooming, Historical, Love Confessions, M/M, Modest Clothing, Passing, Pining, Religion, Shaving, Short Story, Unresolved Sexual Tension, cross-dressing, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caldefrance/pseuds/caldefrance
Summary: Nicoló di Genova felt the fabric of the bulky garment Yusuf had asked him to wear. They needed to enter a town, one certainly frequented by men who had fought for the Fatimids at Jerusalem and were now returning home, for supplies. Unless they disguised his Frankish features, like his light-coloured eyes and the pale skin of his hands, they feared that he might be killed or taken hostage if his identity became known. Nicoló would need to cover all his features with a veil to ensure his safety in the presence of all other men besides hismahram—his escort—Yusuf.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 38
Kudos: 332





	1. Conceal

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written as a response to a prompt originally posted to theoldguardkinkmeme, which you can find here:  
> https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2281475#cmt2281475
> 
> “Nicky in a veil! I don’t care what kind or what time period :3”
> 
> Does anyone remember that very sexy scene from _Poldark_ , when Ross encases Demelza’s legs in finely-knit stockings as a prelude to bedding her? I still do. I think about it all the time.
> 
> The title of this work taken from the Arabic word for “safety,” one of the reasons cited by early and medieval-era islamic jurists (and the internet) as a reason women might veil their entire bodies.

Nicoló di Genova felt the fabric of the bulky garment Yusuf had asked him to wear and tried to imagine wearing something so restrictive.

When Yusuf’s horse had thrown a shoe as they travelled across the rough terrain of the Levant, they could no longer ignore the fact that they needed to enter a town to find a farrier and visit a market to replenish their other supplies.

“It’s just as well,” Nicoló had said, scratching at his unshaven beard which had started itching again in the heat. He accepted that they would need to return to civilization after days spent travelling by themselves. “We’re low on bread and dates and your waterskin is leaking.”

“It’s too risky,” Yusuf had protested, fiddling with the tassels affixed to his horse’s martingale to hide his nervousness. “You are a stranger here—you look like an enemy, a soldier. Your appearance alone would attract hostile attention if anyone were to see you.”

Nicoló shuddered as he imagined for a moment the feeling of rough hands grabbing at his body, forcefully binding his limbs, or holding a sharp blade to his flesh. His memories of the many deaths he had already experienced at Yusuf’s hands when they did battle—the painful experiences of being stabbed or maimed or disemboweled or taking another’s life the same way—still filled him with a visceral fear. He clutched at the thin tunic he wore to cover his chainmail, as he relived the memories of those traumas, seeking the reassuring weight and sound of the chain armour he still wore. Discovery and capture were fates—however temporary—he wished to avoid at any cost.

They had argued over whether they should split up, and Yusuf travel alone into town, or stay together, and risk Nicoló’s capture by the Fatimid soldiers that also travelled visited towns and settlements in this area for supplies.

“You’ll need my help,” Nicoló had argued, gesticulating wildly as was his habit. “Who will keep the horses, while you trade for goods?”

“Who will keep you safe, while you keep the horses and I trade for goods?” Yusuf countered.

“We could say I am your prisoner, given _parole_ ,” Nicoló suggested, undeterred.

“No,” Yusuf disagreed, vehemently. “It’s too dangerous. Anyone might decide they might find some satisfaction in taking you for ransom—or your head.”

They had stopped killing and maiming and wounding each other by now, months after the siege of Jerusalem. They had thrown in their lot together, after Yusuf’s brothers-in-arms had fallen before the holy city and Nicoló had deserted his army of invaders. They had learned the words of each other’s language and about each other’s faith and culture, but still kept the other at arm’s length. They had decided they would travel together only until they discovered the secret of their undying lives—however long that lasted.

“I could dress, as you do,” Nicoló proposed, desperate to find a way they might keep travelling together.

Yusuf laughed off the suggestion, as he re-wound part of his turban which had come undone in a hot blast of wind. “With those light-coloured eyes of yours and your bone-coloured skin, Nicoló, you would still look like a stranger in a strange land.”

Nicoló’s suggestion had given Yusuf a different idea, though, and he worked to convince the other man of it.

“You would look like any other woman. Certain followers of my faith believe it is _fard_ for a woman to cover her entire body when in public—even her face and hands.”

Nicoló hesitated. “Would it not be disingenuous of me to cover myself with the mantle of the women of your faith?”

“Women of my faith,” Yusuf explained to him, patiently, “choose to cover themselves for a number of different reasons—to show their social status and their piety or even to move freely through the world without molestation. There is a verse of our _Qur’an_ that many believe commands it.” Yusuf recited it for him, now, in the classical Arabic of the holy text. 

_O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters, and the women of the faithful, to draw their jalabib over them. They will thus be recognized and no harm will come to them. God is forgiving and kind._

“It would offer you the same protection from hostility,” Yusuf assured him.

“Would your wife cover herself, thusly?” Nicoló asked, and his question brought Yusuf up short. They never discussed such intimately personal matters as wives or lovers. Nicoló did not even know whether Yusuf had a wife, nor had he himself ever shared how he had taken other men as lovers.

“If I were blessed enough to take a wife—and I may not, until I break the curse that binds us—I expect she would cover herself before men who were not _mahram_ to her.”

“I am sorry if my questions offend you,” Nicoló said, apologizing for his curiosity, having noticed how his questions discomfited his travelling companion. “But what is _mahram_? I do not remember that word.”

“ _Mahram_ is a word used by my people to describe one’s relations—members of a family with whom marriage is considered _haram_. For a man, _maharim_ women include his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt, grandaunt, niece, grandniece, his father’s wife, his wife’s daughter, his mother-in-law, his _rada_ or foster mother, and any other _rada_ relatives. A woman’s _mahram_ relatives of the male sex may legally serve as her escorts on long journeys.”

“I see,” Nicoló said, as he tried to assimilate all this information. “Does that mean you are _mahram_ to me?”

“If you dress as a woman, covering all your features with a veil,” Yusuf replied, “others that we meet will believe I am _mahram_ to you—your escort.”

Nicoló warmed to the idea then, feeling heat rise to his cheeks, as he imagined other men making assumptions about his relationship to Yusuf. He accepted to disguise himself, in the manner of a Muslim woman, so others might mistake him as his travelling companion’s _mahram_. 

Nicoló longed, secretly, to be known as more than the other man’s travelling companion.

“We’ll need to shave you, first,” Yusuf had said and Nicoló had agreed without protest, as even he could recognize that his unkempt beard would seem incongruous with his disguise.

Nicoló did have to confess, naturally enough, that he did not own a razor blade—confirming Yusuf’s every impression that he was indeed a Frank and a barbarian.

Nicoló watched as Yusuf prepared his kit—wetting a horse-hair brush with precious water from his own waterskin, lathering it with a soap made from donkey’s milk, and wiping the blade of his razor against a scrap of leather. 

Nicoló sat for him, baring his neck, as Yusuf spread soap across his skin with the brush and scraped it away with a razor—first in the direction of his hair, then against, and then with it again—and wiped the blade clean against the leather. 

Nicoló gave a little gasp when Yusuf held the blade against his throat, and he paused. Their eyes met, briefly, as they both remembered another time when one man had held a blade to another mans throat and had pressed until his blood overflowed and his blade scraped against bone. 

Yusuf focused on his barbering—on carefully moving the sharp blade across the planes of the other man’s face and jaw—to reveal his features. He was surprised to discover that the other man had something like a _shama_ —a mole—on his right cheek, near his lips. He found that, without the shadow cast by his unkempt beard, the pallor of his companion’s beardless face was attractive—like the moon. He brushed his knuckles against the smooth skin of his clean-shaven cheek—to check his work.

Nicoló focused on the sensation of the fluttering touches Yusuf used on him, giving silent indications of how he should tilt his head or hold his skin, and basked in the intimacy of allowing another person to care for him. He wondered whether he could ask the other man to shave him again, even without the expedient circumstances they now found themselves in.

Yusuf frowned as he wiped the last of the soap from Nicoló’s smooth-shaven face. He realized—a little to his own dismay—that he did not dislike his beardless visage.

Yusuf turned away from Nicoló, busying himself with his hands, as he retrieved the parcel with the clothes he would need to disguise himself.

Yusuf looked away as Nicoló accepted the bundle of clothing from him. 

Yusuf thought about how he had purchased women’s clothing at a market in Ayla, along with the rest of their supplies for a trek across the _Badia_ —the desert that stood between occupied Jerusalem and a possible escape route through Persian territory or the Arabian peninsula. Yusuf had purchased the fine garments on a whim, frivolously spending his coin on everything but silver bracelets and rings, desperately grasping at a fading sense of hope that they might soon find an answer to their predicament and he might become free to marry. He had purchased bolts of a beautiful blue cloth, dyed with indigo and embroidered with silver thread and sewn into loose-fitting garments of woven silks and light wools, to let himself imagine the woman who might one day wear them. He imagined how she might wrap her thick, black curls with bolts of silk and cover her warm-coloured limbs with ornately embroidered shifts and coats. He imagined how she might smile and gaze longingly at him as she veiled herself with a mantle of flowing fabric. He imagined how she might even invite him to help her with her dress—or, undress her.

Yusuf’s wool-gathering thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a struggle and the coarse language of the man who was now trying to dress himself with garments he’d bought for the wife of his dreams. Yusuf watched, struck with horror, as the man who could never be his wife struggled to wear her clothes.

“ _Aspettate!_ Stop!” Yusuf cried out, intervening. “You’ll tear a rent in the fabric. Let me help you dress, Nicoló.”

Nicoló had already divested himself of his Frankish garb—leather belt, hose, knee-length tunic, chain mail, and linen surcoat—and was stood before him dressed only in his small clothes. He handed back the heap of blue fabric, grateful, for him to help him dress.

Yusuf set most of the bundle to the side, placing it with care on one of their bedrolls so it wouldn’t gather dust from the ground, and presented the first item—a long-sleeved tunic—to the other man.

“Give me your arms,” he instructed him.

Yusuf passed the _qamis_ over Nicoló’s head and helped him pass his arms through the long sleeves. 

Nicoló held back a gasp, as the cloth passed over his head in a bewildering jumble and gave way to the sight of Yusuf’s face. He felt startled by the other man’s closeness and his intense focus on the shape of his body and on covering it up with fabric.

Nicoló breathed a quick sigh of relief, as Yusuf turned away from him to grab hold of another item of clothing.

“Give me your feet, next.”

Yusuf passed the legs of loose-fitting drawers over each of Nicoló’s feet and drew the patterned silk of the _sirwal_ up to his waist, tying the garment with a silken cord at his waist and his ankles.

Nicoló hardly dared to breathe, lest he betray any sign of arousal as Yusuf knelt before his groin and tied sandals to his feet. He could only imagine how it might feel if the other man chose to lean forward and mouth at his throbbing _cazzo_ through the thin fabric. He almost wished he would, but he quelled that thought before he could let it slip.

Nicoló gave a silent prayer, an _Ave Maria_ , when Yusuf turned to find another piece of clothing without noticing his compromised state.

“This one needs to pass over your head and shoulders, again.”

Yusuf passed another _qamis_ , this one a long tunic cut from fine wool with dense silk embroidery applied to the neckline and sleeves, over the other man’s head.

Nicoló felt his breathing give a little hitch, as Yusuf ran his hands over his chest and smoothed the long garment over his tunic and pants. He felt overwhelmed by the singular attention the other man was devoting to dressing him. He had never felt so aroused before when squires had attended to him and helped him dress for battle.

“Lift your arms for me.”

Nicoló watched, enthralled, by the movement of Yusuf’s hands as he tied a sash embellished with silk brocade around his waist. He could almost imagine his body was being wrapped, like a gift, to be taken apart later.

“Tie back your hair, Nicoló, the last piece is a mantle.”

Nicoló did as Yusuf instructed, knotting the long strands of his light-brown hair with a letter thong, as he watched the other man approach him with a bundle of heavy cloth.

Nicoló bowed his head and let Yusuf encase his body in deep blue fabric from head to toe. He watched, mesmerized, as the fabric billowed around him and blocked his field of vision.

“The _burqa_ should cover the wearer’s body—your body—from the head down to the ground. It will keep your hands covered and shield your eyes from any one who looks at you.”

Nicoló appreciated how the mantle engulfed his whole body—covering his face and hands and legs. He could still feel the heat of the desert sun, but his other senses felt muffled by the mantle he wore. He even fancied his thoughts came slower to him and imagined he might now move only with protracted, carefully-considered movements—lest he trip on his own two feet and reveal himself as an imposter.

“Can you see me?” Nicoló heard Yusuf ask him.

Nicoló turned in the direction of the sound of his voice and realized, then, that he could see Yusuf through a screen of woven mesh. He thought the screen that had been sewn into the mantle to veil his face filtered his experience of the world around him—colouring the warm tones of the desert landscape, their belongings, even Yusuf’s skin with fascinating shades of blue and green.

“ _Sì._ I can see you when I look at you. Otherwise, I almost feel like a child hiding under a blanket.”

Nicoló moved his arms beneath the fabric of the _burqa_ , awestruck, as he watched the billowing movements of the beautiful fabric about his body. He had never before had the chance to wear or even look upon so much finery. 

Nicoló felt a sudden thrill that he should be so lucky to be given the chance to wear such a luxurious garment. He realized this garment had been made and purchased for someone special—beloved—and wished he could some day prove himself worthy of such love.

“You cannot behave like a child,” Yusuf admonished him, putting an end to his reverie. “While you wear this garment, you’ll need to act as any respectable woman ought to. Stay close to me—walk behind me and don’t approach or speak to other men.”

“ _Capisco_. I understand,” Nicoló said, stilling his movements.

“Good,” Yusuf said, relieved. “Do as I say and you’ll do fine.”

Nicoló watched as Yusuf packed up the rest of their belongings—their bedrolls and cookware and, even, his straight sword. He watched as he wrapped the naked blade and cross of his sword in loose cloth—concealing its characteristic shape in bulky material. He recognized how the other man had devoted the same care and attention to wrapping his own body in the fabric of the _burqa_. He wondered, for a moment, whether the man who devoted such careful attention to his sword even though it had been used to maim and kill him many times could ever devote the same attention to his own naked body. 

Nicoló suppressed that dangerous thought before he could muster all his courage and ask him. He wasn’t even certain whether the other man liked men or whether he only ever had eyes for women. He couldn’t let himself ruin their relationship—however tentative and temporary—to satisfy his own sinful desires.

Nicoló could not find any indication that Yusuf thought of him the same way as he watched him belt his curved blade to his waist and lead the horse saddled with all their belongings onward in silence.

They travelled on foot together, as _mahram_ , towards the clay and stone buildings of the market town they had spotted in the distance.

Yusuf turned back once to look over his shoulder at Nicoló, to see if he was following behind him, and when he did he saw the figure of the wife he might have taken in another life.


	2. Reveal

Nicoló followed Yusuf through the streets of the market town, gathering dust all the while, as he stepped in all the same places where his travelling companion left footsteps. He allowed himself to touch each imprint the other man left behind, following him like a ghost.

Nicoló stared at his surroundings, as he shadowed the other man, taking advantage of the concealment his disguise allowed him. The garment which veiled his strange face allowed him to study the town’s architecture and observe its inhabitants as he never could have as himself.

He marvelled at the facades of buildings that lined the market square decorated with colourful tiles and arches and crenellations, noting which seemed familiar—akin to what he remembered seeing in Genoa on market day—and which seemed new to him. He could see the minarets of a mosque rising over the town’s _mercato_ , marking the market town’s place in the world. He counted the covered arches and cloth awnings around the square offered the market’s sellers and buyers protection from the bright Levantine sun. 

He saw market stalls set out in the shaded galleries with butchered meat, fresh produce, dried fruit, olives, confectionary, fresh eggs and poultry, tea, bolts of fabric, silks, carpets, saddles and harnesses, furnishings, ceramic vessels, livestock. He saw things he had never seen before—strange fruits and patterned fabrics—and looked for familiar products—wool and fish—and did not see them.

He watched the people—who looked like locals and travellers, going about their business by themselves or in family groups. He saw women veiled completely as he was and women dressed in veils that covered only their hair or with a second piece of fabric that covered the lower part of their faces. He saw they wore muted colours—black and blues and burgundy. He stared as they passed him in the street, went about their business without paying him any mind. He also stared at the men wore different clothing than his companion—loose-fitting clothing in light colours that contrasted with the fabric of their head coverings. He made a note of how many men wore blades or _saifs_ and whether their paths might cross.

He wondered what they saw when they looked back at him, walking down the street by another man’s side.

He noticed how different he found this community seemed to him, compared to the other settlements and cities he had visited. Their strange presence had always caused ripples in the communities they entered—and occupied—interrupting the peaceful business of these places as women and children sequestered themselves and able-bodied men came out to meet them. Disguised as he was—passing for a member of this community or, even, of a like-minded nation—his presence passed unnoticed and everyone around him carried on with their business without knowing they were being studied.

Nicoló led their packhorse down the busy streets that surrounded the _mercato_ and watched as Yusuf ducked in and out of the arcades, purchasing much-needed supplies and enquiring after a farrier for their horse. He watched how Yusuf greeted each vendor—exchanging the rehearsed greeting in good faith and making conversation as he negotiated and paid for parcels of dates and olives and hard cheese and semolina flatbreads and a water-skin that would not leak.

Nicoló realized how well Yusuf seemed to fit in here, as he watched him converse and laugh and match the behaviours of the people he met, as though they were his own people. 

He realized that he was an imposter—out of place and out of sorts—dressed in borrowed clothing, pretending to be someone he could never become. Like Yusuf. Yusuf’s.

He would give anything to maintain this ruse, so he might keep watching him and continue to travel by his side. He would gladly give up his name, his faith, his language, and, even, his selfhood.

He realized that he had made a mistake when he had accepted to travel in the guise of Yusuf’s _mahram_. He had allowed this man to shave him and to dress him—to touch him like an intimate—without knowledge of his feelings. He had taken advantage of his companion’s anxiety—no doubt shaped by traumatic memories of the sectarian violence that always seemed to follow an invasion. He realized that when he revealed himself—his inclinations, his desires, his feelings—the truth would drive an irreconcilable wedge between them.

He would be forced to reveal his imposture soon enough and when he did he would be left alone to bear the consequences. Even if today they passed through the market town unnoticed and unmolested, as it seemed like they would, in time his secret would be revealed and they would part ways. Yusuf would leave him to court and marry another—someone suitable for him—and he would be left alone to travel to the world’s end.

He felt his throat choke up and his eyes blur with unshed tears as he contemplated the enormity of an unending life to be endured without his companionship.

He felt unspeakably grateful, then, for the misappropriated garment that veiled his strange features and hid his feelings as they walked together that morning.

Yusuf added the last of his purchases— _baklawa_ —to one of the saddle bags and spoke, softly, to his veiled companion.

“I have learned where we can find a farrier,” he said, slowly, so his companion might understand his Arabic.

Nicoló gave no reply, maintaining the silence he had kept all morning, and turned to follow wherever Yusuf might lead him.

“Shoeing the horse shouldn’t be an onerous task,” he continued, filling the silence between them, with the same energy for conversation he’d shown with vendors at the market. “If the farrier is not otherwise occupied, it should not take more than part of an hour. We could be on our way before _Salat al-Jumu’ ah_ , at mid-day.”

Nicoló remained silent, beside him.

“It’s not ideal,” Yusuf admitted, as he’d much rather wait out the intense heat at mid-day in the shade of the town’s buildings, “but we can’t enter the _masjid_ for the congregational prayer together—nor can we risk anyone finding your behaviour out of place.”

Nicoló maintained his silence, and though Yusuf had ordered it, it began to discomfit him. He had grown used to his companion’s frequent remarks—about the places they visited and the things they saw, about their travelling plans—and his unusual behaviour now unnerved him.

Yusuf scratched at the thick hair of his beard, making a decision for them. “When we visit the farrier, we’ll need to unsaddle the horse and you should wait with our belongings. I have one more errand to run while we’re here and if you wait there for me, I will come find you before long.”

He left his silent companion to wait with all their belongings in the shade of a tiled porch for the farrier to fettle the horse shoe, trim the horse’s feet, and fit the shoe again.

He wandered down the street to see the fine pieces displayed by a goldsmith—an array of bracelets and earrings and broaches. He felt he needed something special to court his future wife—to prove his worth as a marriageable partner and his ability to pay her marriage gift if she demanded it.

He leaned in to appreciate the filigree detail of a gold roundel, threaded on a wire with a precious-stone bead, to be worn as a pendant. His trained eye appreciated the delicate beauty of the pendant’s radial pattern of filigreed gold in foliated arabesques of doubled twisted wire and openwork patterns of wires arranged in six-petal rosettes, and large hemispherical bosses. He thought the red stone at the centre made the piece look like a radiant sun.

He turned his attention to a pair of gold earrings, decorated with filigree hemispheres, enamels, and outlined with strung pearls. He recognized their crescent-shape— _hilal_ —as similar to the earrings his mother wore every day of her life.

He felt the weight of the remaining coins in his purse. He couldn’t afford anything extravagant today—he would need to take on hired work for more funds.

He studied the pieces and tried to imagine the wife he dreamed of wearing them. Would she favour the roundel pendant or the _hilal_ earrings? Or, perhaps, a fine bracelet of twisted wires with a clasp set with a piece of turquoise?

He tried to imagine fastening the clasp of the bracelet around her narrow wrist or draping the necklace around her neck so it rested suspended between her breasts.

He found he couldn’t picture her face any more. His mind was filled with memories of another—of his smooth-shaven throat, of his flat chest, of his engorged manhood.

“ _As-salaamu Alaikum_!” the silversmith said to him, interrupting his lust-filled thoughts.

“ _Va-alaikum As-salaam_!” he said, returning the greeting, as he focused on examining the displayed wares.

“Do you see anything you like? Something for your wife, perhaps?”

He didn’t have a wife.

“I am still only looking,” he confessed.

He couldn’t afford a marriage gift.

“I have also small rings and simple elements like gold beads that are suitable for someone still garnering a marriage portion.”

He wouldn’t be courting a wife.

Yusuf thanked the goldsmith for his time and wandered away, lost in thought.

He felt something shift in the centre of his being as his thoughts returned again and again to the one person who could remain by his side, as he suffered through death and undeath.

He realized that he felt love-mad for a man he had met as an enemy and come to know as a travelling companion and longed to know as a spouse.

He realized that dressing him in clothing he had intended to give to the wife of his dreams had allowed him to see past his violent memories and to see him as an intimate.

He realized that had begun to think of him as his beloved.

Yusuf desired to reveal all this to his beloved and longed to be desired by him, in return.

He could afford only a modest courting gift—a pomegranate—which he purchased from a market stall and stowed in his bag and hurried back to find the man who he now knew meant more to him than he could dream.

Yusuf felt his breath catch in his throat, when he saw the veiled figure of his beloved, waiting for him.

Nicoló had a confession to make.

He had decided to reveal the depth of his feelings to his companion before he was found out.

He decided he could no longer keep his feelings secret and wait for events to take their course—all the while hoping against hope that his companion might give up his dreams of taking a wife in a marital union and choose him instead. 

He resolved to find the strength to end their relationship.

He contemplated the words he might use to reveal the measure of his indecency.

_Mea culpa._

He planned to confess that he had taken an inappropriate pleasure in wearing his borrowed clothing.

_Ignosce me._

He would bear the other man’s dismay and his disquiet and his disappointment. He would prepare himself for the eventuality that he was cast aside—deserted.

He felt the fabric of the borrowed garment that veiled him. He remembered wishing that he could some day prove worthy of such a luxurious gift—become someone’s beloved—and realized it for the fantasy it was.

Nicoló waited for Yusuf, brooding and biding his time, and kept his peace as he watched him pay the farrier, saddle the horse and lead them onward.

Nicoló followed Yusuf into the desert, like a shadow, mooning after him while mourning his loss.

Nicoló knew his grace period had lapsed when Yusuf called for a halt by mid-afternoon, to rest and share a meal between _Salah Asr_ and _Salah Maghrib_ prayers while the heat of the day passed.

“You needn’t wear the _burqa_ any longer,” Yusuf said to Nicoló as he set about the business of making camp. “You needn’t hide yourself from me, too.”

Nicoló grasped the fine cloth of the mantle in his hands, recognizing that he couldn’t hide himself—or his feelings—any longer.

Nicoló forced himself to stand as still as a statue when Yusuf approached him and lifted the veil to reveal his beardless face again—flushed and bright from the afternoon heat and a little flustered at being uncovered.

Nicoló met Yusuf’s gaze bravely, as the other man scrutinized him for a moment before he turned away to fold and pack up the precious fabric of the mantle.

“I have something to confess to you,” Nicoló said, at last.

Yusuf paused in his movements, surprised by the seriousness of the statement with which his companion had broken his peace.

Nicoló knelt before him, his hands twisting in the fabric of his bedroll, as he prepared to say his piece.

“I am a man who lies with other men.”

Nicoló felt his heart seize in his throat as Yusuf said nothing—gave nothing away—as he listened to his confession.

“ _Fotto altri uomini._ I let other men take me—lie with me—as men might lie with their wives.”

Nicoló forced himself to reveal everything—to confess all the wrongs he’d done him—before his shame left him tongue-tied.

“I let you touch me—to dress me as you would dress your wife—because I desired to be known as more than your companion.”

Nicoló couldn’t stop now, though he could see his dramatic revelation had surprised—maybe even distressed—Yusuf.

“I wished to be known to you—and you to me—like a lover.”

Nicoló watched Yusuf rise to his feet and walk away, and he felt his stomach drop down towards his groin—as though the centre of himself were falling away. He lowered his face into his hands, trying to hide how his features twisted with pain.

Nicoló accepted Yusuf’s wordless rejection—though it made his heart break and his whole body ache. He recognized this tacit response for what it was: a kinder alternative to heated words or wounding blades they had exchanged when they first met.

Nicoló resolved to respect this rejection and to not force himself where he wasn’t wanted. He decided he would need to stay behind when his companion moved to leave, and he would make his own way to a seaport or some other haven far from here.

“I think I feel the same for you.”

Nicoló looked up, dumbfounded, to see Yusuf standing before him, offering him a sphere of a golden-orange colour—something he had never seen before.

Yusuf wanted to bite his tongue. He could have said something meaningful to reveal his own feelings—something prepared, something suitable, something memorable even.

_Blessed is the man who can follow your path through the darkness._

Nicoló looked shocked—poleaxed—by what Yusuf had revealed to him.

_Your heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of._

Nicoló couldn’t believe the truth of it, that Yusuf might return his feelings.

_I love you beyond measure and reason._

Nicoló looked even more confused, when he accepted the gift of the pomegranate from Yusuf.

“It’s a fruit, Nico. You can eat it.”

“Oh,” he said, bewildered, as he considered how to eat a fruit he had never seen before.

“Let me cut it for you.”

Yusuf took his small blade and sliced off the top of the fruit—removing its dried flower. He then scored the rind of the fruit five times along its ridges, cutting along the white pith, before peeling the fruit open along the arils to reveal the vibrant red-coloured seeds.

“Hold out your hands for me.”

Yusuf carefully dislodged a few pomegranate seeds and dropped them into Nicoló’s open palms.

“Oh,” Nicoló gasped, awed by the sight of a simple luxury. “They look like so many precious stones! You’ve given me rubies!”

Yusuf laughed, revelling in Nicoló’s awestruck delight. He had fallen hard for this man and he had no regrets.

“Try it!” Yusuf encouraged him and watched him carefully select and lift a ruby-red seed to his parted lips.

Nicoló’s eyes lit up—entirely forgetting his previous distress—as he tasted the tart and sweet flavour of the fruit and crushed the pulp between his teeth.

Yusuf smiled to see how Nicoló then proceeded to stuff his face with pomegranate seeds and then hold out his palms, greedily, for more.

Yusuf fed him the seeds from each segment of the pomegranate—even eating a few himself—as he listened to Nicoló describe his appreciation for the fruit and its flavours.

Yusuf only interrupted Nicoló to tell him that he’d dropped one of the seeds.

“Nico! Hold still!” Yusuf begged him. “You’re going to stain the _qamis_!“

Nicoló froze as Yusuf brushed against his groin as he plucked a single ruby from the folds of his borrowed clothing. He stared at the other man, wide-eyed, as he watched him eat it.

Yusuf watched as several expressions quickly crossed Nicoló’s face—disbelief, desire, lust, regret—and sought to reassure him.

“I could help you undress,” Yusuf offered.

“Please,” Nicoló said, breathily. He hardly dared to move as the man he had dreamed about moved to undress him.

Yusuf began by untying the brocaded sash he’d wrapped around Nicoló’s waist earlier. He gently tugged at the ends of the thick fabric of the girdle, unwrapping it, and letting it fall undone against the bedroll beneath them.

Nicoló breathed deeply, as Yusuf ran his hands down the folds of the long woollen dress and raised its hem over his hips and then his head. He gasped as he felt the dense embroidery scratch against his smooth-shaven cheeks as it passed over his head.

Nicoló shivered despite the afternoon heat as the air passed through the fabric of the tunic where it was dampened by his sweat.

“You should have said you were so uncomfortable,” Yusuf said to him, as he touched the sweat stains that had discoloured the light-coloured tunic.

“I had—” Nicoló said, his breathing shallow and his cheeks flushing, as Yusuf moved his hands lower down his body, “so many other things on my mind.”

“And now?” Yusuf hummed, as he palmed Nicoló’s groin through the thin fabric of his loose drawers, and teased him by rubbing the silk against his sensitive flesh.

“ _Oh Dio_!” Nicoló begged him, unable to find the right words. “Yusuf! Please—”

Yusuf capitulated to his unspoken demands, untying the cord that belted the drawers and freeing his engorged cock. He stroked it, tentatively, as he might stroke his own cock—once, twice—before taking his hand away again.

Nicoló cried out at the loss—breathing hard—as though he’d ran only half of a marathon.

“I’ve not—I’ve never done anything like this,” Yusuf confessed, as he reached out tentatively to touch him intimately. “I’ll need you to tell me what to do—what you like.”

“Oh,” Nicoló said, his cheeks warming with embarrassment, as he realized what Yusuf meant.

Nicoló would need to guide Yusuf through the motions of lying with another man.

“We’ll need a _unguento_ ,” Nicoló instructed him. “In my satchel, there’s a small vial of oil.”

Nicoló let his head fall back against the soft fabric of his bedroll as Yusuf searched for the lubricant. He felt his head was spinning from how quickly beliefs he had taken as fundamental truths—that his beloved only felt desire for women, that his beloved only felt amicably for him—had changed in the course of a single day.

“I think I have it,” Yusuf informed him, returning to his side, with a small glass container.

“Unstopper it,” Nicoló instructed him. “You’ll want to oil your fingers and then smear the oil inside me—to prepare me—to take your girth.”

Yusuf hesitated.

“Let me help you.” 

Nicoló uncorked the vial, liberally pouring the oil it contained to anoint Yusuf’s fingers, and then guided his hand to his anus.

“Don’t be afraid,” Nicoló reassured Yusuf, as he felt the other man breach him. “You want to stretch and open up my muscles. You won’t hurt me this way.”

Yusuf grunted, as he fingered Nicoló, and Nicoló clenched and unclenched his muscles around him.

Nicoló reassured Yusuf when he fumbled and encouraged him when his fingers began to cramp a little.

“I think—” Nicoló gasped, brushing the sweat from his forehead, as Yusuf fingered him with two and then three digits, “I’m ready. You can—you can have me now.”

“If you’re sure,” Yusuf murmured, brushing his knuckles against Nicoló’s beardless jawline.

“I am,” Nicoló panted out. “I want this, if you want this.”

“I do,” Yusuf whispered against him, feeling a sense of anticipation and arousal he’d never known before course through his body.

Nicoló cried out as Yusuf breached him—first, with just the tip, and then, with the whole length of his cock.

“Good. This feels good,” Nicoló admitted. “When you’re ready, I want you to move inside me.”

Yusuf fumbled a little at first, as he thrusted—nearly pulling out all together—before he found his rhythm. Yusuf discovered new things about Nicoló—how looked, how he sounded, how he felt—as they chased their pleasure together.

Yusuf listened to Nicoló speak all the while—giving him advice and guidance and encouragement—until he wasn’t able to any longer.

Nicoló shuddered and experienced another death—the first of many good deaths—as he climaxed and expired, spending himself, with Yusuf.

Yusuf held Nicoló, revelling in their new-found intimacy after a whirlwind courtship, as they both tried to recover their breath following the consummation of their union.

Yusuf thought that the rich blue fabric of the dress against which he’d bedded Nicoló suited him. He had purchased this clothing with the intention to give it to someone else—someone he had never met but hoped would become dear to him—and only now realized how becoming the fabric dyed with indigo and lapis lazuli against the pale skin and dark hair of his companion.

“I had hoped to find someone to marry when I purchased these clothes,” Yusuf admitted, revealing his last closely-guarded secret, as he traced the patterns of embroidered silver thread with his fingers.

“I know.” Nicoló spoke, shifting away from him and twisting his hands together with shame. “I mean only that I had guessed you had had them made for someone special. I am that sorry you ever felt I needed to disguise myself by wearing them.”

”I’m not,“ Yusuf said, reassuring him as he took his hands in his and pressed kisses to them, delighting in the new-found realization that he could do so for as long as he wished. “I did not know myself. I had not realized then how beloved you are to me, Nico. I could never have realized how much you mean to me until I saw you dressed in my marriage clothes.”


End file.
